Wednesday Weird: The Toxic Blood

Since it's October, the month of Halloween, I figured I'd try to pick extra weird or scary things for my Wednesday Weird posts. Of course, I already missed two (one was for ISWSG and the other I just forgot) but also, there's 5 Wednesdays this month so I think it will all work out.

Today we're going to talk about an urban legend.

Have you heard that story about a woman who arrives at a hospital who's blood turns out to be so toxic that people have to flee for their lives?

Well, if you have or haven't, the story is totally true.

On February 14th, 1994, 31 year old Gloria Ramirez was suffering from advanced cervical cancer and was admitted to a California ER.

Gloria was not doing well at all, and at one point the hospital staff had to remove her shirt to defibrillator her heart. When they did so, they noticed an oily sheen on her skin and a few other staff said they noticed a fruity or garlicky smell that seemed to be coming from her mouth.

When a nurse drew Gloria's blood for tests, she detected a foul odor - chemical, like ammonia. Other staff could smell it too, and one staff member noticed manila colored particles floating in the syringe of blood.

And then hospital staff started to gag and collapse.

23 people were affected, and the ER was evacuated while a decontamination unit was brought in.

Unfortunately Gloria died 40 minutes later. An autopsy was performed (in hazmat suits, natch) but despite a detailed and massive forensic investigation, it's still not known what happened to turn Gloria's blood into a toxic ooze.

A lot of people try to write this case off as mass hysteria. Which, let's be honest, could totally be the case.

EXCEPT. The worst victim of the 23 people affected by Gloria's blood spent two weeks in intensive care, suffering from hepatitis, pancreatitis and avascular necorosis (a condition which cause BONES to DIE) so that kind of nukes (heh) the whole mass hysteria theory.

The mostly likely case is that a medication Gloria was taking, interacted with another medication, etc and turned her blood into a potent nerve gas. But nothing is conclusive yet.

Just don't forget, human beings are walking, talking chemical reactions, so sometimes, you never know what you're going to get.

In Which I Conferenced

Saturday I hit the MN SCBWI annual conference. It was my first one, since I've only been a member for a year now (which, I mean, you can attend if you're not a member. I just didn't know about it until I became a member)

There's something to be said for a conference that only lasts a day. At the very least, it means you still get some of your weekend to do your normal weekend stuff (for me, that's errands and cooking club. And writing blog posts, natch)

So anyway, here's a rundown of the conference:

The keynote speakers were David Small and Sarah Stewart. David is an award winning illustrator and Sarah, his wife, is a Picture Book writer. The first panel was David talking about his graphic novel memoir, Stitches.

David Small was just an amazing speaker. Seriously. Everything that came out of his mouth was entertaining and profound and funny. He was one of those speakers you could have listened to the entire conference.

He and Sarah gave another presentation on her book The Quiet Place, which he had illustrated.

And they were both adorbs. Like, you know those couples that love each other so much that you can't help but love them too? Not one of those couples that fills facebook with "I love you" and "I'm on my way home!" and "I can't wait till you get home!" Those couples drive me crazy. Listen, I know you love each other, but you don't have rub everyone's face in it. David and Sarah were not like that at all. I think everyone just absolutely loved them together.

There were only like 5 copies of Stitches for sale at the conference. I got the second to last one. BAM!

The conference was then split up into Workshops. Two at a time, one for illustrators and one for writers, so naturally I hit the writer ones.

The first one was "A Whole New World: How Dreams and Desire Can Improve World-Building" put on by Sara Sargent, Assistant Editor at Balzer + Bray, a HarperCollins imprint.

Her presentations was great. The best part was, though, a writing exercise we did. She had brought with a box of books and she said anyone who volunteered to read theirs could pick out a book.

Later, someone would tell me that she thought I was super brave to volunteer and I told her the truth, that I will pretty much do anything for a free book. I got Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Honestly I wanted to be first, but one girl had a critique to go to in the middle of the workshop and managed to raise her hand faster. But I went second.

The exercise was to just list out your MCs tangible want, emotional want, barriers to their success, tools to combat the barriers and wish fulfillment. Most of these are things I actually write down before I write my rough draft, so it was easy to participate for me.

The second workshop was "Cracking the Nut: One Agent's Advice on Craft and Career for Writer's of All Levels" by Linda Pratt from Wernick & Pratt Agency.

Her presentation was good, but I was familiar with a lot of what she said, so there really wasn't much that I found surprising.


There were critiques going on as well. If you paid an additional $35 you could've had your first 5 pages read by an agent or editor or creative director. I didn't participate, mostly because I thought $35 seemed pretty expensive for only 5 pages (or at least, it did to me, since it seems like there's always blog contests or auctions where you can get 50 pages or more read by agents). But in hindsight I kind of wish I had done it, just because everyone else was and I felt a bit left out. Of course, that's a known flaw I've talked about here.

There was, however, a first pages event. And that was free to enter. How it worked was, if you wanted, you emailed your first page before the conference. Then the last event of the day was the two agents and one editor would listen to randomly selected first pages and comment on them.
It was all anonymous and random, so there wasn't a huge chance you'd get picked, but it was fun to hear what the agents and editor had to say. And I totally learned a LOT on how to write Picture Books

BUT!! I was totally picked! They only had time to go through 4 of them and mine was the 3rd one!

I have to say, it was utterly terrifying hearing someone read my first page (also, kind of a bummer, she flubbed my best line on that page, which gave it a different meaning. Le sigh).

I think I got pretty nice feedback. Or at least, they all said something good about it (they liked my opening line, my tension and the dialogue) where as it seemed all the others had mostly criticisms. But still, it took me an hour or so to calm the eff down so I could accept the critiques with a critical eye.

So there you have it! I tried to keep this post short, but clearly, I didn't.  Sorry, and high five if you stuck through the whole thing!

Friday Fun

Yessssssss! We've made it to the weekend once again!

Let's get this weekend started right with some Yvie internet fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Which I Post In Error...

Nothing to see here...

In Which I Forgot

Guess who forgot to write her Wednesday Weird post?

(hint: It's me)

I blame the dayjob. And Twin's work schedule changing and throwing off my routine.

So instead you get this video today. Why? Because why not?

 

In Which We Build

So my little staycation is over. Sadface. Back to the dayjob and the interwebs and everything else. But at least it's finally gotten cold outside. Minnesotans who don't like the cold peeve me off. I mean, why do you live here if you whine when it gets below 60?

On the opposite spectrum, why are there still people wearing flip flops when it's 35 degrees out and I spotted a few flurries? THAT MAKES NO SENSE, PEOPLE.

Ahem. Anyway. So twin and I did a lot of stuff on the staycation. Not quite as much as we hoped, but isn't that always what happens?
But we started refinancing our house (WOO HOO!) and got the veggie garden prepped for winter. BUT! Most importantly, we honed our carpentry skills and pumped out a brand new pocket pantry!!

We have terrible pantry space in our kitchen. Just one little "fancy pantry" as we call it with a door that swings out of a tiny cabinet. It seems cool, but in reality the shelves are too small to hold anything bigger that a bottle of olive oil, so we have to carefully stack things on the floor. Or, when we run out of room (like we have, now) we just have to put things on our counters. It's super classy.

Anyhoo, thanks to Pinterest, we came up with a solution and Twin and I got to work.




Lumber and a patio full of dog toys

 

 





Woo hoo! The frame has been built!



Shelves and dowels added. Now we stain!



It got colder as the week progressed, so we built a fire in the fire pit. Also we have tons, TONS, of dead fall from our trees that have been waiting for years to be burned. We made a nice dent in the brush pile. The fire was burning so hot that we had troubles keeping it going because it would burn the wood so quickly we almost wouldn't have time to fetch another pile from the brush pile.



YAY! The finished project! It's not stocked yet, because we're still letting the polyurethane dry, but this is our pocket pantry! It slides into the gap between the fridge and the wall (we have a 4.5 inch gap there) It's on casters and can roll out and in.



Here's a pic of it in it's little pocket. I cannot wait to load this baby up!

 So there you have it! That was a big part of our vacay. So how about you? Did you do anything crafty or exciting while i was away?

Insecure Writer's Support Group And An Agent For A Friend!

Today is the first Wednesday of the month, which means Insecure Writer's Support Group.

And usually I like to have something awesome or inspirational, because I know we all get down in the dumps and sometimes the best way to get out of it is for someone to put the boots to you, medium style (Uber ultra mega nerd points for anyone who gets that quote (prediction: No one will))


BUT! Since we're on the topic of hard work, and my belief that all of us can get there if we just keep trying, keep pushing, keep getting better, I would like to direct you all to the blog of my pal Kristin Rae, where she has an important announcement: SHE HAS AN AGENT!!

Kristin and I started querying at the same time, and had fulls and revisions at the same time. And though I stopped querying for a bit, she kept going and it paid off in spades for her!!

So stop on by and give her a big ol' Internet high five!
Because she's awesome and some day soon, that will be you, too. I just know it.